A Year

Its been a year almost to the day that I was woken up and moved from my home port of Inverkip some 800nm to my new home of the Medina River in Cowes, the hub of the sailing world, at the other end of the country.

Its been an interesting year, in that following my travels down repairs to replace a port side port hole (window) to the master cabin were needed, the electric winch stopped working as had the windex instruments, both rear speakers in the cock pit port side, the oiled fired heating stopped working and every pulley or spinlock was either seized or tight with salt deposits.

In additional to this 'maintainance', a new wind generator has been fitted & wired in; a switch to increase my amp hours for longer passages joining two banks of batteries together when needed; a new halyard; a gybe preventor, a 'flopper stopper' and a 32amp to 16amp socket convertor for when I'm put on a pontoon where only 32amp sockets are available plus I'm wearing a mesh between the rails, abaft the beam as they say (more to prevent people pinching the odd instrument cover) but it is safer

The wind generator is a Marlec 914i the new generation of equipment and works very well toppoing up the batteries 24/7.  Although during windy nights the transfer of vibration can be heard throughout my cabins, worst obviously in the rear port side where it has been fitted above.  A rubber matting is being sourced to counteract that before finally securing everything down.

The simple switch matches those I already have under the chart table and links the three service batteries with the bank of four used for the winch, bow thruster & windlas, which to be honest is mainly used when the engine is on & so the 85Ah alternator is supplying the power.

A new halyard was fitted to provide a spare for now, but then the riggers who were called in to check the tension of my shrouds may have spotted a crack in one of the pins that hold a spreader to the mast.  Although my skipper has since been up and challenged this with them, so we'll see what the outcome of that will be.

The gybe preventor is a simple line with a quick release shackle on the end so it can be unclipped and secured to a warp and lead back to a winch as required, without putting the crew at risk in a rolling sea.

The 'flopper stopper' is genius, a simple triangular piece of marine ply with an anode fitted to the front & three lines brought up to a swivel.  This when under anchor is lowered over the side acts as a hyraulic brake to ease the rolling motion.  As I roll to the side where it's deployed at the end of my boom it dives down, then as I try to roll back with the next wave it flattens off and the water captured across its width tries to push up against that above it and so slows the rolling process, clever.

So lots of things have been going on especially during my summer trip and there's more on the way.  I've heard of talk about Copper Coating to replace my wearing out anti-fouling.  So I am being looked after and used although the summer hasn't been a great one weather wise plus theyhave Dagmar House to renovate too.  I'm off to the main dealers again to have the deck windows replaced this week, so after a year I'll finally be fully water tight once more !

Just the windex instruments and the VHF radio that keeps cutting out at the rear despite replacing the speaker, but the Southampton boat show is about to commence, so you just know who my skipper has on his list of people to see !